Advantages of Teaching Assistantships

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Advantages of Teaching Assistantships

  • They are often less time consuming: While research assistants are asked to spend 10-20 hours in the lab each week, teaching assistants are only asked to get the job done. The job is to teach your class and grade the homework that you assign. At first, this may take you 20 hours a week. You can spend a lot of time preparing lectures and writing exams. But often times, graduate students are asked to teach the same course semester after semester. Once you prepare your course materials, there is quite a bit of a time savings. It's a good idea to update your lectures and exam materials each term. But these updates really don't take much time. After a few semesters of teaching the same course, you will probably discover that you are only spending 5-7 hours teaching each week. That gives you a lot more time for your studies when compared to research assistants who have to absolutely put in 10-20 hours per week, every week.
  • Looks great on the Academic Vita if you want to become a teaching professor: If you want to eventually become a teaching professor, you are going to have to get some teaching experience. Faculty search committees looks for candidates with teaching experience when selecting the their new faculty. If you accept a teaching assistantship, you will have experience when you apply.
  • Looks great on a resume under your Communication / Presentation skills section: Some grad students do not plan on going into academia after graduate school. Instead, they plan on applying for industry jobs. Employers in industry typically want you to be an expert in your subject specialty and have good written and verbal communication skills. After teaching a variety of college classes, you can safely say that you have lots of experience presenting your ideas others. This looks good on a resume that is being submitted for employment in industry.
  • Helps you learn your subject specialty: Teaching a course on a particular topic, and especially having to explain course topics to undergraduates, is a great way to really get to know your subject specialty. By taking on a teaching assistantship, you will become very well versed in your field.

Compare this to... Research Assistantship Advantages



 

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